1854-S $5 "Discovery of a Lifetime"

Didn't see this in any thread so please remove if it's double posted.

Wanted to share a great story from CU on a huge discovery of a very cool coin - 4th known 1854-S $5. Can't imagine the feeling of hearing your coin is fake, then declared a "discovery of a lifetime" and a 4th known example.

https://forums.collectors.com/discu...s-fourth-known-1854-s-5-and-authenticated-ats

EDIT: Direct link to NGC story
https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/6557/discovery-of-a-lifetime-1854-s-five-dollar/

 

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wow

 

Nice story.. Thanks for sharing!

 

Amazing story! Thanks for sharing.

 

The 4 looks odd:

 

Very cool discovery.

 

I wondered who looked at it too. As i know most of them. Man I’d love to find that. I believe it’ll bring a million and a half plus

 

The first one I did a net search it says NGC. The 2nd one is the coin from the article.

 

As someone who loves early S mint coins (Seated and Liberty Head) this is an amazing find to me. However, the new discovery seems to be a different obverse die from the first coin.

I’ll use a denticle ruler like on Seated dimes. Going straight down from the tip of the bust and counting that as denticle 0, the first coin is position 0B1 (with the left tip of the bottom of the 1) while the discovery coin is a 1C. The date is in a different position.

To explain that a bit easier, the first coin has the left tip of the 1 pointing down to the space between denticles. The discovery coin has the 1 pointing down to the center of a denticle.

Interestingly, the Smithsonian example (on PCGS) also has position 1C. The Smithsonian example also has the weakness on the 4 that the discovery coin has. The Boyd piece has the same date position. I don’t think any pictures of the Dupont piece exist - it was stolen in the 1960s and has never been seen since.

Is the first picture of a genuine 1854-S $5?

 

I was going to ask the same question. The two images shown are not from the same obverse die and with a mintage of only 268 coins I seriously doubt they would have used two obverse dies.

 

The 1st one from post #6? That is the discovery coin.
The first one from post #9 might not be a San Francisco.
However, the 4 on the discovery coin looks bad.
I was waiting for some information, like they reworked the 1851 die or something.

 

The weakness on the 4 is actually a good sign, as the Smithsonian piece has that same die feature. It’s like the 1853-O No Arrows half dime - if you see one with a strong date, it’s fake. The coin left the Mint looking like that.

 

It's such a bad 4. Did they rework the 1851 die?

 

This is one really exciting find, even if you don't collect gold at all. A big deal was made about the 5th 1913 Liberty nickel being found, but that's nothing compared to this legitimate coin unknown until now. I'm hoping to get to see it at a show one of these days. I assume someone will be exhibiting it at the ANA show this summer.

 

Absolutely true. We knew that the 5th 1913 nickel existed somewhere, its whereabouts just weren’t known. This coin was not known until now, and it’s a genuine example. Looking at die markers, I’m going to have to agree with the experts. This piece is 100% genuine.

 

Another note: Even four surviving examples of the 1854-S $5 is a stroke of luck. Unlike the 1913 Liberty Head Nickels, the 1854-S $5 was just dumped into local circulation with no thought. These coins were the workhorses of California commerce, and all early dates are far scarcer than generally percieved. It’s estimated that about 100 examples of the 1858-S $5 survive out of an original mintage of 18600. Applying this ratio to a mintage of 268 tells us that about 1.44 examples should survive. But there are four.

 

@brokecoinguy
Here is a small article that I found in todays New York Post newspaper